Consciousness and the Paranormal

[smcder]

Blech!

For example!

I really didn't expect that one to go over well . . . with anybody!

 

[Tyger]

I don't think we can say everything about anything. In fact men need to listen more, but what we can do is learn and adapt. What I notice on the forum is that the generosity piece is most often provided by the women here, and most aggression is provided by the guys. Same old same old, I suppose. What's always interesting in gender studies is how the nuances are vastly different, and you're right, I shouldn't be absolutist about any definitions. If anything, I wish the forum was a more inviting space for diverse voices, especially those of women, who are often maligned or compromised by immature male stuff.

Ain't that the truth. Hear-hear!

What's fascinating is it's a forum on the paranormal, yet some of the most prolific posters here cannot tolerate conversations pertaining to what is non-physical. Go figure!

Personally, I find the conversation regarding what is male and what is female a tad bogus. Yep. What I mean by that is - it's all a continuum, and we occupy various points on that line, sometimes depending on the conditions of the moment, sometimes depending on the conditions of our age in life.

Yes, we can make broad generalizations - but get down to the particular and it falls apart. Like men not emotional?

But hey, sure there are differences - a lot having to do with enculturation as much as biology (the old nature/nurture debate). But someone traveling the path of self-transformation very quickly passes beyond the defining parameters of gender or sex.

I recall an anecdote told about an occult teacher from a century ago. It was observed that during a lecture there would be 'shifts' in how the person 'felt' - from the man he was, to feeling female - a quick movement between the two 'impressions'. I had a similar experience with an occult lecturer - a doctor, female - it was like watching sunlight rippling across the person: male/female/male/female. The experience is of androgyny - both-in-one - the absolute balance of the ying/yang in the human being.

Freud did one massive disservice to the humanity of the 20th century - he did many but this one is a big one - he sexualized human behavior. Not that sexuality is not there in other cultures and doesn't influence everything from bound feet (so the woman could not run away) to veils in public and not displaying one's luxuriant cascade of hair - we could go on and on. He just made it all about sex - and it isn't.

 

[Tyger]

For example!

I really didn't expect that one to go over well . . . with anybody!

It's all culturally determined. It's about a certain time and place. Look at transvestite men - dressing like women - and much of that stuff is not pleasant to wear. Transvestite women - what makes them 'male', looking like a western version of a man in a man's suit. I don't get it - never have. If anything suggests to me that gender issues are a cultural issue, its when I see that.

The male of the species is usually the peacock.

Look back 200 years before Beau Brummell ensnared the sensibilities of the Prince Regent and changed the sartorial choices of men. What a boring sartorial life men lead now.

It is true that we are different. Take for instance the below film clip. Make a mental note of what you expect to see - as a man, as a woman, as someone from the West, as someone enculturated by modern film - when I tell you that the title to this YouTibe video is - "Barry Lyndon - Seduction Scene". How much of what you expect is culturally driven, gender driven?

My point is: were we to do the little 'play' you are suggesting, the most one would get would be parodies of cultural biases. IMO a good intellect is a good intellect, and a good human is a good human - andogynous.

 

[Tyger]

Yet, certain illnesses are hard lessons in learning that we must change ourselves if we would get well.

I believe I may be undergoing this even as we speak, since about April.

Sigil Magick, with which I have had only a small amount of (mostly) cautious experience . . . is startlingly effective and terrifyingly unpredictable . . .

Sounds like there is a story in there. Care to share?

 

[Burnt State]

What made you continue for an extended period of time (1.5 years) to Ouija? What was the draw or effect or fascination or motivation?

and decided that barring a few odd instances, all information supplied by the Ouija is done so through a combination of setting, people present,

What do you think might have accounted for the information supplied in those odd instances? And can you specify the instances?

Thanks again for sharing - this is fascinating, I've never used a Ouija except to play around with an online version. I wonder if anything like the experiences you had would occur with a computer based Ouija . . .

The initial Ouija group was formed by myself and some other women as teens. I was extremely interested in trying to prove whether or not there actually was something on the other side. The initial contact spirit on the board identified herself as Heather, a seven year old girl who had been burnt alive along with her family by the father. I was a major local history buff and spent many hours on microfiche desperately trying to understand the history of the crazy northern Ontario town I was growing up in. I scoured for hours trying to find house fire stories from the mid-30's when the spirit said it happened. I could not prove one bit of it.

Ouijaing with Heather and the group became an obsessin for many of the core members and related friends. Because of a love triangle in the middle of it all there was always an extra intensity and surrealness to our sessions. The contact was always strong and we trained Heather to double spell all letters and use identification signals upon appearing on the board. In short it became a group ritual, more powerful than religion. When I found the gold charm with her name on it, we were already five months into the sessions. Like other synchronisitic events it felt like the universe was talking to me.

A very memorable session included me ouijaing with my younger brother and my father asking questions. So aside from id-ing the name of his friend that recently suicided, it correctly identified birth dates of relatives I knew nothing about. It also knew illicit info about group members, but that was just our subconscious talking.

Earlier on the forum I posted the grand finale part one where Heather revealed she was actually her father and he was coming to kill us all. That was quite a night.

 

[Tyger]

I am constantly reminded at how women are more 'telepathic' than men. I don't mean telepathy in the normal way you think, but in the way that feelings are perceived and translated into practical, accurate, working knowledge just by looking at someone. Most married hetero men, who pay close attention, recognize this truth and know that the best thing a man can do in their partnerships is to learn to listen better. Because, unfortunately, intuition is something we come a little slower to.

. . . if there are gender differences present here - then would you (or me, as men) be fully qualified to define this experience "telepathy"? If it's qualitatively and phenomenologically (however you spell it!) different for men than women, then can we men say everything there is to say about it? What if Thomas Nagel had written: What It's Like to Be a Woman?? And what do we do with the "reports" - the stated experience of women . . . can we understand them fully? This has not even come up at all in this thread! Surely gender has some relationship to the differences in style and approaches to the topics on this thread? If we didn't have any gender information on the participants, how well could we do at guessing gender just from the style/ideas of the posts themselves? (obviously excluding references to gender?) I'm sure that experiment has been done somewhere . . . ! And the women on here right now are probably going duh!

Anyway, it's interesting because I tend to be very "telepathic" in this sense you describe above - before I learned to set good boundaries, it was not unusual to have a perfect stranger telling me their darkest secrets within a few minutes - I did learn to be a skilled listener and e-liciter in my upbringing, my parents grew up in alcoholic families and developed almost preternatural survival skills and so some of that comes from family dynamics in my upbringing, but my mother and grandmother both were very intuitive/very sensitive and so some of it may be inherited.

I will give myself as an indication of the gender confusion when using text as the sole clue. I signed up to this chat site and omitted indicating male or female. Up until this thread - when Constance referred to me as a 'generous woman' - I have been referred to as a 'he' on this chat site. So which am I - based on text alone?

To be fair, I have been surprised to learn a poster was male when I had assumed they were female, and vice versa (not everyone indicates their gender). But it's also interesting that I will look to see if a poster is a man or woman. What is that about? Why do we need to know?

Bottom line, I've been on chat sites that were mostly women and god help you if you got into an intellectual vise grip with one. Not pleasant. Women do not know how to have a reasonable conversation any more than does a man under certain conditions. It's not a gender issue imo - it's whether or not the intellect (and human being behind that intellect) has been adequately trained/educated - and that transcends gender.

 

[Tyger]

Earlier on the forum I posted the grand finale part one where Heather revealed she was actually her father and he was coming to kill us all. That was quite a night.

Either you supply the link to the post, Burnt State, or you must tell the end of the story!

 

[Tyger]

BTW - as we start to talk about 'psychic' stuff I 'feel' an energy shift in myself. Where we place our attention, that is what we begin to attract - and notice (synchronicity). In this truism lies the explanation for a great deal of what is seen to happen to people who 'dabble' - and is one of the reasons so many religions - and spiritual disciplines - issue injunctions and/or warnings against 'dabbling in the dark arts'.

Paganism was a bit more complicated than modern Pagans (enjoying a very sanitized version) recognize. Burnt State's description of the Ouiji Board's influence at it's most powerful is an indication of how the Pagans experienced their daily lives. They were in that kind of consciousness - with a difference - they 'saw', too. The breaking of the light of the intellect into that 'Pagan darkness' was huge - and the Church had a lot to do with bringing that 'light of intellect' though it held it's mystical center with the Mary Mysteries. (It was with the Protestants - and the Jesuits - that the clear light of intellect really rayed out). The intellect shatters the hold of such lower forces on the soul - loosens the grip.

It's a very different feeling from when discussing ideas. It's why I never seek it out, or go near it if I can help it - though it is fascinating in it's way. Parts of the etheric and lower astral realms are littered with cast-off, unredeemed stuff ['doubles']- that exists objectively without any moral or ethical sensibility - it just is - it is not 'alive'. [Here must be mentioned the very real experience of the 'Guardian of the Threshold' - when we confront ourselves and all we have been in past lives - to put it (deceptively) simply. And then there is Humanity's 'Guardian of the Threshold' - where we confront all that humanity has been and done - these are encounters that require nerves of steel, to put it in the vernacular. (This is also the reality to which the psychological concept of the 'subconscious' is referring but still comes no where near close to embracing the fullness of what lies within that idea of the 'Guardian of the Threshold'). P.S. There is another Guardian, Who Is The Initiator - unmistakeable - Pure Love.]

In this sense it is very understandable to not want anything to do with 'woo' stuff. There are very sound reasons why we must keep certain things at bay until we have been able to strengthen our higher faculties - but no one is granted a pass when it comes to meeting the 'Guardian of the Threshold', high or low.

 

[Burnt State]

Either you supply the link to the post, Burnt State, or you must tell the end of the story!

Sorry, I had to run out the door for a sleigh ride through the woods and couldn't finish my response to @smcder . ... The night of the big reveal the entire group was present - all six of us teens in my basement rec room - no adults at home. It was the end of the summer, and Heather was erratic, a little loose with her spellings and frantic planchette movements. Then the spirit revealed that all along it was in fact Heather's father that was the real spirit of the board and that he was going to come to kill us all and gave us the order of murders, with myself at the last. With that final threat the planchette moved directly off the board to the 'goodbye' word and right at that moment a door slammed shut upstairs.

Everyone was feeling a totally freaked out. People screamed and were really nervous. Armed with a hockey stick I lead the whole group up the stairs, as after our initial feelings of fear passed I knew that we had to investigate in case of a burglar. I was feeling a little on edge myself but up the stairs we went to, in fact, find every single door in the house closed. All the windows were also closed in each room as I wanted to check each room's closet. There were no drafts, no animal in the house, absolutely no reason for any door to slam like that. It was truly perplexing. No one wanted to go back on the board with me after that night.

After the summer I went off to university and brought my ouija boards with me. I found a new partner, found Heather again, but then this spirit gave way to a claim of a woman who had been assaulted on campus and her body had been hidden. No end of ouija Q & A brought forth any details to confirm this. By mid year I had studied my ouija notes, and had drawn conclusions that my conscience, and my real time interactions with people I ouijaed with had a significant impact on the narratives we were co-creating unconsciously. I stopped the hobby, started reading Jaques Vallee and got nvolved more in real life dramas instead.

I can't explain the two instances with my father of actual concrete information being provided that was outside the knowledge of those operating the planchette, nor can I explain the trance we were put in one night in a cemetary forest as we sat oblivious to a fire raging right beside us, only 10 meters or so away. Ironically that night the cemetary we were in happened to be one dedicated to an aboriginal residential school. The students and staff buried there were all burnt alive in a tragic fire. I also can't explain the coincidence of finding the gold charm. These things suggest that there is some type of order in the world as much as it suggests that our own desires and obsessions can conjure up their own reality. We seem to be able to will things into being, or at least it feels that way sometimes.

I don't believe in mediums or in contacting the dead. But when I contacted the supposed dead spirit of my Dad's friend who explained why he was in hell because of his suicide I have to say I can not explain that at all. I don't take the ouija board very seriously now, almost 30 years later. I don't use them at all and don't believe that 'spirirts' can come through them. I do believe that the intensity of the people involved with each other, and all our own hormonal, shifts were somehow tapping into something, a force, an energy, a method of accessing information and it is not reliable; it is slippery and co-created by those involved.

Like any intense, new relationship, rituals, magic and sex have their own kind of power, that move our minds and will shift our paradigms.

 

[Constance]

This is especially interesting from Tyger's post just above:

Parts of the etheric and lower astral realms are littered with cast-off, unredeemed stuff ['doubles']- that exists objectively without any moral or ethical sensibility - it just is - it is not 'alive'.

That is an interesting idea. If that is the case, it could account for the varieties of 'types' that turn up in experiments with ouija boards and also as 'spirit guides' for mediums. I have no experience with or information about ouija boards, but I've read a lot about the extraordinary mediums studied by the SPR (and parallel organizations in other countries) and the transcribed accounts of their sittings as facilitated by these guides. In some cases I read about, a longtime spirit guide was replaced by another at some point (in one case, studied over many years, there were three in all). Possibly the young girl who came across in Burnt State's extended experiments was a yet earth-bound consciousness, and her breakdown at the point where she expressed fear that her father would kill the members of the ouija group marked a point at which her own continuing fear of her father broke through her consciousness and was projected on to the people she had been trying to help in a constructive way. Would be good to hear from Burnt State about the kind of personality this spirit expressed before that breakdown. What happened in that case suggested to me that all spirit guides attaching themselves to mediums, or coming into service for them, might be surviving consciousnesses (or partial shells of consciousnesses, that retain a stronger than usual connection to earth, can't quite let go of it, and yet have travelled back and forth to the boundaries of post-mortem spiritual existence enough to form alliances with consciousnesses there, who also facilitate communication between persons residing in two different dimensions of being.

Steve mentioned hypnagogia, that transitional state between waking and sleep in which we suddenly experience one or a succession of images that have nothing to do with what we were just thinking (or reading, for those of us who read ourselves to sleep). The first time I was aware of that momentary hypnagogic state, I experienced a very quick succession of richly detailed historical images, four in all I think, of which I later only remembered the first. The image was intricately detailed, like an elaborate engraving; in the foreground there was what looked like a Roman centurion on an enormous white horse rearing up toward the viewer. Both the soldier and the horse were ornamented with metalwork, and the soldier (and I think the horse too) wore helmets with attached plumes). I saw them in the foreground against a background of what looked like a temple with numerous ascending steps, on which small groups of people were standing about watching. I hadn't been reading about Rome (rather, a feminist detective novel), and I did not remember ever having seen this elaborately detailed image before. I realized, thinking about this later, that we must carry around libraries of images and other information in our subconscious minds that might not all have originated in our own biographical experiences. Some might be stored from past lives, and some from others' experiences in our species' history. Our species might have had to learn early on to work toward distinguishing what was actually in front of us in our current existential lives from the panorama of experienced life stored holographically in our collective consciousness. In the effort to construct for ourselves (individually and within a social group) a 'coherent' concept of reality, we might have gone too far in that direction, leaving us with the heavily overdetermined and limiting world view dominant in our culture today.

 

[Burnt State]

What's fascinating is it's a forum on the paranormal, yet some of the most prolific posters here cannot tolerate conversations pertaining to what is non-physical. Go figure!

Personally, I find the conversation regarding what is male and what is female a tad bogus. Yep. What I mean by that is - it's all a continuum, and we occupy various points on that line, sometimes depending on the conditions of the moment, sometimes depending on the conditions of our age in life.

Yes, we can make broad generalizations - but get down to the particular and it falls apart. Like men not emotional?

But hey, sure there are differences - a lot having to do with enculturation as much as biology (the old nature/nurture debate). But someone traveling the path of self-transformation very quickly passes beyond the defining parameters of gender or sex.

I just want to add two more cents to what you and Stephen were talking about. I work intensely on issues of gender in my school, mostly around gender equity, gender based violence, communication styles, empowerment etc.. Currently I have a female student transitioning into a male - it's quite a complicated journey. Through his eyes i see how gender is an exclusive territory.

I wish it simply was a continuum of experience, free from stereotypes, but that's not how it goes down at all. Gender lines are clearly drawn, and the power of conditioning is a powerful, defining force in our lives depending on the sex we are born with. I do believe though we can adapt, and become whole again, and welcome back into ourselves those gendered characteristcs that were severed by social training.

Unfortunately I don't think we have enough women here posting to come to any conclusions, anecdotally or otherwise.

Surely gender has some relationship to the somewhere . . . ! And the women on here right now are probably going duh!

Anyway, it's interesting because I tend to be very "telepathic" in this sense you describe above - before I learned to set good boundaries, it was not unusual to have a perfect stranger telling me their darkest secrets within a few minutes - I did learn to be a skilled listener and e-liciter in my upbringing, my parents grew up in alcoholic families and developed almost preternatural survival skills and so some of that comes from family dynamics in my upbringing, but my mother and grandmother both were very intuitive/very sensitive and so some of it may be inherited.

I was very taken by these last comments as I often feel like I am the repository for stories of trauma and drama. The complex, painful stories of others find their way to my ear. I often think it is my own traumatc experiences and self-developed survival skills that have left me open to listening, and responding, and sharing. These are the best moments of humanity and difficult ones. But those stories have changed me forever, for the better. I do feel this is more of a feminine space, a space that nurtures. It's something I learned over time through other women and my willingness to unlearn some of my male training so I could be better in my job.

 

[Constance]

Just saw Burnt State's new post and look forward to reading it later tonight. Right now I have to leave to meet some friends for dinner. This is all getting very interesting I think.

 

[Tyger]

I didn't know that and I find it interesting. Did Blavatsky and/or Annie Besant take that view? Whoever led that development, what were their motivations? Was it in reaction against specific practices by another group?

You know the experience of looking back and regretting one didn't ask more questions of one's grandparents when they were alive? That's how I feel sometimes in these conversations here, except rather than my grandparents, of course, it's all the teachers I have known and the books that I've read - I should've asked more question! Delved more deeply, taken more notes - sigh'.

So, to answer your questions I have to delve very far back to the story told by a 19th century occultist (at the beginning of the 20th century) - and I know I will scramble it so just take it lightly, like a soft breeze opening a butterfly's wings. It has very little substance than that - and who knows if it's 'true', after all. In fact, you may already know more about this than I do.

Well, there was a disagreement among occultists/esotericists at the beginning of the 19th century. A lot was going on then and to off-set the materialism that was gripping people a decision was made (not 100% agreed to by the attending initiators) to introduce mediumship to the general populace as a 'proof' of a spiritual reality. The plan went woefully awry from nearly the get-go and turned into seances with table-rapping and all manner of mischief, both from the 'other side' and this side (as in fraud and deceit and what-not - yes) - but also from what was being contacted and dredged up from the 'other side'. Unlike Blavatsky, who was extensively trained in the occult with an accompanying high calibre intellect, most 'mediums' were not of her metal. With scandals and active enemies (some assumed to be the opposing 'camp' of occultists who did not think that mediumship introduced in this way was a good idea) the whole effort went down in flames, inducing the opposite effect from what had been aimed for. In fact, it is said that an American occult brotherhood actually put Blavatsky into what is called 'occult imprisonment' - not a good thing (would not want to be on the receiving end of that karma train when it hauls into the station!)

So, yes, from what I gather there has been a serious difference of opinion regarding mediumship (Example: Blavatsky and Besant were definitely on the side of phenomenon-based research - Steiner was not). Mediumship (of a kind) was what was taught in many of the Mystery Temples/Schools of the ancient world. (Unconscious mediumship - where the ego does not cooperate willingly and with knowledge - is considered 'dark' and dangerous). The 'mediumship' in the temples was still striving for a conscious cooperation with (hopefully) high calibre individualities. The last exchange of places at a high level is purported to have been the Ego of Jesus and the Ego of the Christ. (Not saying it's so, it's just one of the stories - that goes along with the two Jesus children - explaining the variances in the gospel nativities).

Hope this is interesting. The stories are pretty 'out there' (mainly because not mainstream history) but no more than some physics I've read - and a lot more engaging. (Not to mention the scrambled stuff I've come across on the television show 'Ancient Aliens' ).

 

[Tyger]

Just saw Burnt State's new post and look forward to reading it later tonight. Right now I have to leave to meet some friends for dinner. This is all getting very interesting I think.

The human story is always so much more interesting, I think.

Have fun at dinner - the day after Christmas is always deep-cleaning for me and I am just a third of the way finished. Tally-ho!

 

[Constance]

Lovely dinner, busy restaurant. I want to comment first on the gender issue and quote this from Tyger:

Personally, I find the conversation regarding what is male and what is female a tad bogus. Yep. What I mean by that is - it's all a continuum, and we occupy various points on that line, sometimes depending on the conditions of the moment, sometimes depending on the conditions of our age in life.

That's pretty much the way I see it too. I think we're all conditioned as we grow up as to what is appropriate feeling and behavior for females and what is appropriate for males. But I also think that such conditioning to a degree emerges from and overlays {often to absurd extremes} something deeply embedded in nature. We have inherited a great deal of our nurturing behavior, as females, from our predecessors in the so-called 'animal kingdom'. The primatologist Frans de Waals has gone so far as to theorize that most if not all of our values as humans are inherited from our animal forbears, and I think he is right. He has a number of books developing this thesis, which was first set out in Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals. These days we're aware, though mass media including the internet, of the numerous occasions in which animals of one species will come to the aid of an injured member of another species, bring food to it and care for it as it heals, and, if it is an infant, nurture it to the point of vigorous independence. Then often the bond continues for life. Wild dolphins have come to human divers, placing themselves in the divers' hands, anticipating help. It is not surprising that these animals anticipate help from the humans since they themselves have offered such help to us over centuries.

Yes, we can make broad generalizations - but get down to the particular and it falls apart. Like men not emotional?

Indeed. Some of the most empathetic and nurturing people I've known have been men. I think it's been circumstances of birth, growing up among enlightened people (who are not at all necessarily well-educated people), that has been instrumental in saving such men from social demands that they severely control and even bury their emotions through dis-use.

 

[Tyger]

I've read a lot about the extraordinary mediums studied by the SPR (and parallel organizations in other countries) and the transcribed accounts of their sittings as facilitated by these guides. In some cases I read about, a longtime spirit guide was replaced by another at some point (in one case, studied over many years, there were three in all).

There have been some amazing channelled works - one of particular high calibre (imo) is 'The Course In Miracles'. There are others, too.

There is then the phenomenon of Edgar Cayce who went into a trance state to retrieve information. He really wasn't doing what we would call channelling, I don't think. I don't know enough to comment but know it was a significant corpus of work he produced. In fact, I use his almond oil recipe for the skin - it's been an available commercial product since the 70's/80's. Has always been a very inexpensive oil to buy. Very much a hidden treasure.

The first time I was aware of that momentary hypnagogic state, I experienced a very quick succession of richly detailed historical images, four in all I think, of which I later only remembered the first. The image was intricately detailed, like an elaborate engraving; in the foreground there was what looked like a Roman centurion on an enormous white horse rearing up toward the viewer. Both the soldier and the horse were ornamented with metalwork, and the soldier (and I think the horse too) wore helmets with attached plumes). I saw them in the foreground against a background of what looked like a temple with numerous ascending steps, on which small groups of people were standing about watching.

Your feelings, and the thoughts that come to you as you contemplate the image, would inform you regarding what the 'story' was behind the images. Care to share? I myself - on an intimate level - do not have a 'happy feeling/memory' regarding Rome. Intellectually it's all fascinating and I know what I need to know to teach Roman history - but the 1st to 2nd century A.D. - when I contemplate it in my being - feels very 'barren', empty, hollow. The images I get of being in a Roman villa are very sterile, not happy - though I sense privilege. I sense there was also a good intellect but no heart warmth at all. I'm repelled by it.

BTW, Constance, some time back you mentioned something about the Cathars. I always meant to respond, to question you about what you said, but now I wouldn't be able to find your post. Could you repeat what your thought was? (The Cathars are very dear to me).

 

[smcder]

Yes I can describe it fairly well. Someone also put up an aura chart here someplace, but that is more for diagnostic purposes than what it looked like. I was working in BC and they were putting some of us up in hotels. It was at night and I was visiting with a friend in his room. We were in the TV and sleeping area. My buddy was on the bed and I was sitting in a chair about 3-4 feet away. We were just talking. The immediate area was dimly lit by the ambient light from an incandescent table lamp behind and to the side of us, and the rest of the room receded into the shadows. Apparently this is an almost ideal situation for this to happen ( in case you want to try it ).

I had looked away from him momentarily at something and then back out of my peripheral vision and that's when I saw it ( apparently this is also similar to a technique for training one's self to see them ). His body was sort of silhouetted somewhat against the shadows behind him and all around the perimeter was a glow that can best be described as the kind of thing you see in a solar eclipse, where there is a soft peripheral glow interspersed with a flame like plasma that changed color and moved. It is reminiscent of Kirlian photos, but not as electric, and instead of steady it was dynamic, like those glass encased high energy plasma things, but without the sharp spark. Once I saw it, it was as if I had somehow focused on it analogous to the way a stereogram works, and I was able to look directly at it. It was really cool, very beautiful, and alive.

But like I say, it freaked my buddy out the way I was looking at him ( LOL ). We're both straight, and I think he may have gotten spooked or something. They say there are people who can see auras on command, and others who need just the right conditions. It is said to be useful in metaphysical and even physical diagnosis of certain ailments. I don't know how true any of that is, but having seen one myself, I can't rule it out. On the other hand, maybe it's something that is actually foreign, and our assumptions about it are entirely false. All I know is what I saw for those all too brief seconds. Now it makes me want to try seeing one again.

That is absolutely fascinating - thank you for sharing this!

 

[smcder]

Does anyone have experience blogging? I had an account on Blogger years ago - but it has been taken over by Google . . . is it still a good one to use or does anyone have other recommendations?

 

[smcder]

I'm about to get back to my project of reading studies off of Dean Radin's site:

http://deanradin.com/evidence/evidence.htm

In the meantime, I've been on a tangent to try to find stories about paranormal abilities in combat and in business, I had heard stories I think from Vietnam about soldiers who were guided to safety by a purple/violet light - sometimes repeatedly, to the point where these men relied on the light for their survival. In searching for this, I found this very strange report about ESP and hair . . . never heard anything like this before:

Supernatural Science: It’s in the Hair | Ghost Theory

 

[boomerang]

I had a long-ish observation typed out regarding gender differences as being biologically innate vs. socially learned. But the cooler part of my psyche has prevailed and I would just say take time to read peer reviewed research on the subject. Perhaps no other issue is at once so fundamentally important to humans but so difficult to define. One of my favorite quotes by Heinlein is that "Everybody lies about sex." Hardly new and hardly news.

I have to say--in reading accounts of those who have "mystical" visions, among them people like Tesla and Jung and as described above, I am somewhat envious.